Livi Stanford

Livi Stanford is former associate editor of redefinED. She spent her earlier professional career working at newspapers in Kansas, Massachusetts and Florida. Prior to her work at Step Up For Students, she covered the Lake County School Board, County Commission and local legislative delegation for the Daily Commercial in Leesburg. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Kansas.

The Hope Scholarship is the nation’s first scholarship for bullied students. More than 46,000 Florida students in district schools were subjected to harassment, bullying or violence in the ’15-’16 school year.

Florida families can now begin applying for the first scholarship in the nation for students in K-12 grades who are bullied.

The Hope Scholarship gives parents of eligible students victimized by bullying the opportunity to choose a participating private school and receive a state-supported scholarship to attend. The program also allows parents to transfer their child to another K-12 public school with available capacity within the school district, or to receive funding to transport the student to a public school in another district.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Naples, who sponsored the bill this spring creating the scholarship, said he wants to gives parents choice.

“My hope is that parents get all the information they need to act in the best interests of their children,” said Donalds. “We should look for ways to empower parents at all times with respect to the education of their children. This is one of the tools in the tool box for parents to be empowered.”

The new program is administered by Step Up For Students, a nonprofit that also publishes this blog, and applications on the organization’s web site went officially live to all families this morning.

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States grew by 57 percent in 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Officials from Jewish schools in Florida said Monday they are remaining vigilant after a gunman killed 11 people Saturday at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Rabbi Chaim Friedman, director of development for Yeshiva Elementary School in Miami Beach, said he is always looking at ways to upgrade security at his school, which serves 500 students. (About half use the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students). “We are worried about the future,” he said.

In recent years, Yeshiva has beefed up security and now has its own armed guard.

Even before the Pittsburgh shooting, security at Jewish schools in Florida has been a statewide concern. This past spring, the Florida Legislature approved $2 million in security funding for 46 Jewish day schools. Unfortunately for Yeshiva, that appropriation did not cover the hiring of security personnel. The Florida Board of Education has requested another $2 million for Jewish day schools for the 2019 session.

Gary Chartrand (third from right) receives an award during his final meeting as a member of the Florida Board of Education

In his final meeting after serving nearly eight years on the Florida Board of Education, Gary Chartrand on Thursday used the occasion to speak of parental choice.

“To me, education is as important as oxygen,” said Chartrand, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Scott and served two terms. “A great education is not only a privilege, but a right. … The potential to live the American dream is not just for a few, but for all. That is why we need to fight for all educational opportunities for students to reach their potential. Choice is important. The more choice we have, the more freedom we have.”

Chartrand is executive chairman of Acosta, a North American sales and marketing firm in Jacksonville, and is credited with bringing KIPP charter schools to Florida. He also founded the Chartrand Foundation, which provides funding to public schools in lower-income neighborhoods.

Board member Michael Olenick said Chartrand played a huge role in “forging our education policy.”

And Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said Chartrand worked to always represent the student.

“I have to say you make those decisions with a student in mind,” she said. “No matter where pressure comes from, you hold firm and you demonstrated some of my favorite words: strength, courage and encouragement.”

Chartrand said he tried as a board member to emphasize the importance of educational choice.

“Not every school is going to fit for the child, and I think we need to empower parents to make those decisions,” he said.

Carrie Balazy and her son, Kenneth. Thanks to the nation’s first reading scholarship for public school students, the family has greater resources to improve Kenneth’s reading ability.

Kenneth Balazy, 10, learns differently than your average student. He has ADHD and executive functioning disorder. As a result, he easily becomes distracted and finds it hard to focus in class.

A 9-year-old Sanford resident, whose mother wanted her name withheld, struggles with a learning disability, where it takes a little longer for her to grasp the meaning of a lesson.

And English is not Camila Cabazos’ first language, making key concepts in learning hard to comprehend for the 10-year-old Sarasota native.

All three students share a common challenge: they struggle in reading comprehension and need more one-on-one help to overcome obstacles in learning. But parents say it has not been an easy road to find that needed help. Private tutoring is not something many can afford on a consistent basis. The parents say schools do offer help, but not enough to meet the needs of their children.

Now, these parents have a new place to turn: They have been found eligible for the first voucher in the nation aimed at helping public elementary school students who struggle with reading.

The damage sustained from Hurricane Michael at St. Johns Catholic School in Panama City was extensive.

As public schools remain closed in eight counties in Florida’s Panhandle after Hurricane Michael, private schools are also picking up the pieces left by the storm’s aftermath.

Several private schools also sustained major damage, with some having to rebuild. Step Up For Students, a nonprofit that administers the state’s tax credit scholarship program among others (and publishes this blog), identified 26 private schools that are in the areas most affected by the hurricane. As of Wednesday, Step Up officials say they had only been able to reach nine of those schools.

One school in the Catholic Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee — St. John’s Catholic School in Panama City — was hit hard by the storm.

The controlled open enrollment law, which was modified in 2016, is working, according to choice experts.

In the first year after Florida lawmakers passed legislation that lets parents choose public schools across county lines, the state Department of Education reports that 5,397 students took advantage in 2017.

As such, educational choice experts proclaim that the controlled open enrollment law signed by Gov. Rick Scott in 2016 is working.

“As more parents learn about this option, it will mean more students will have the opportunity to receive a quality education in the school that best fits their needs,” said Adam Peshek, managing director of opportunity policy at the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Even so, there is still a lot that is not known about the effect of the law, including its impact on school districts. Several districts officials said the law’s failure to provide transportation options for transferring students is a serious shortcoming. The options for parents are also limited by capacity at the most popular schools.

“Florida does not have a lot of data on the topic and what they do have is self-reported enrollment data,” Peshek said. “We don’t know much about which schools students are leaving and which districts/schools are benefiting the most. “Transportation is a large issue. Florida has very large, county-based districts. So, in addition to transportation being a barrier, options may just be too far for a parent to consider.”

House PreK-12 Education Appropriations Chairman Manny Diaz, who sponsored the legislation, said his goal was to provide students access to quality schools and provide the best use of empty seats. Though Florida has long allowed students to choose among district school through a policy known as “controlled open enrollment,” students could attend districts in other counties only through specific signed agreements. Diaz found that process to be too daunting for families.

Sonja Baker said she was grateful for the open enrollment program, which gave her the opportunity to apply to several schools outside the district for her son, who has autism and struggles academically in traditional public schools.

“As a parent of a child with special needs, I realized the traditional setting wasn’t for my child,” Baker said. “We live on a county border line. It doubles the options of giving him the quality education I feel he deserves.”

Baker ended up choosing to put her son in a charter school in the district.

All told, 266,515 students participated in open enrollment in 2017, according to DOE. Most attended schools within their district, but both programs present challenges, according to district officials.

Peter Licata, the assistant superintendent for choice and innovation for Palm Beach County Schools, said the lack of transportation options for students creates an inequity that hurts less-advantaged students. Some parents also have complained that more popular schools are not available because they tend already to be at capacity with traditionally zoned students.

In St. Johns County, for example, only two elementary schools had space available to be chosen under its open enrollment program. Countywide, there were only 29 applications this year for open enrollment.

Christina Langston, St. Johns chief of community relations, said in an email that no other schools meet the controlled open enrollment criteria to allow more students. She said the student population increases by more than 1,500 students each year.

Peshek suggested the state might consider offering financial incentives to schools that take students outside of their attendance zones.

“I can certainly see a scenario where the state would want to reward schools for taking students outside of their zoned district, in the same way they reward schools for academic success or providing access to advanced courses or industry certifications,” he said.

Students at Somerset Academy in Miramar. The National Blue Ribbon school opened in 1997 to give parents different learning options for their children and to help alleviate district overcrowding.

The population was booming on the Gold Coast in the 1990s, surging by 20 percent in Broward and Miami-Dade alone, just as Florida passed a new law opening the door to charter schools.

Maggie Fresen Zulueta, who helped create one of the state’s first charter schools, remembers the pressures well. “The schools were severely overcrowded,” she said. “You had situations at the nearby public schools with multiple trailers in their fields.”

Zulueta and her husband opened Somerset Academy in Miramar with a dual purpose – to give parents a different learning option for their students and to help the school district cope with overcrowding. And she remembers it as a partnership with the Miami-Dade School Board.

“In Broward and Miami-Dade counties, they knew they had this big challenge with providing adequate facilities for the huge population growth,” said Zulueta. “They were appreciative of the help to alleviate the problems. They did not see us as a big threat.”

Two decades later, two counties in Central Florida – Lake and Osceola – are facing similar growing pains and they are turning to the same playbook. They are adding charter schools as a piece of the overall growth strategy.

Alumni from Cardinal Newman High School, returning as faculty. Many Catholic school students return to teach at their alma mater – drawn back by the bond of community and religion.

Anxious thoughts flooded Joe Molina’s mind.

He was navigating his first day of teaching Spanish at Cardinal Newman High School, a Catholic school in West Palm Beach.

Cardinal Newman was no ordinary school. Molina was a student at the school nine years earlier. That spring day, he was overwhelmed and reached out to his mentor and former teacher, Susanne Escalera, for help. Now a fellow colleague, she told him to take several deep breaths and relax. He then could face the classroom.

Those kind words reminded Molina where he had found himself: back at home.

Molina’s story is not uncommon. Many Catholic school students return to teach at the very schools they attended. They are drawn back, in part, by the bond of community and religion. Molina forged relationships at Cardinal Newman that have lasted nearly a decade.

As a student, Molina overcame his hurdles in calculus with the help of a teacher, Christine Higgins, who is now the principal. And when he tore his ACL and dislocated his knee cap in high school football, his coach, Don Dicus, stood by his side, reminding him that no matter how hard it gets, it was essential to go forward.

Now in addition to teaching Spanish, Molina is the football coach at Cardinal Newman, hoping to teach the same values he learned in high school to the next generation of students.